WPSLP Premier General Admin

WPSLP Premier customers will need to add their User ID and subscription ID under the Store Locator Plus / General /Admin tab. To find your Premier account information, log into WordPress Store Locator plus account .

Scroll to Premier Subscription Info
Thank you for being a Premier Member. You will need to enter your User ID and Subscription ID via the Store Locator Plus General Settings Tab under the Admin section in order to get the latest updates to the Premier Plugin.

Your user ID is: (A number will be here)

Subscription id is : (numbers will be here)

How to validate Premier with Multi-site Installations

Enroll in a Premier Subscription

Premier Subscription Licenses must be validated on the primary site of a multi-site install. This is typically the FIRST site in your site list, but can be changed via wp-config. If you are using multi site you should know which site is the primary Blog ID. Adding your Premier id and your license on your sub sites will not validate the WPSLP Premier license. (This information only applies to WordPress SLP and not MYSLP.

Communication with the SLP license server is required for any licenses to be validated. You can check if standard web requests are working between your WordPress install and SLP. This can be tested from within your PHP environment with a simple PHP script that uses a ‘curl’ or ‘file get contents ‘operation.

You can also click on the Store Locator Plus / info tab in the back end of the plug-in. If you are seeing “Latest News” with fairly current dates then the problem is most likely not a blocked communications via a firewall. In those cases the issue is most likely an incorrectly typed subscription ID or you have entered the info on the wrong site of a multi-site install.

Google Geocoding and Browser keys

This article effects the WordPress StoreLocatorPlus  users “Do it yourself ” plug-in with pay as you go Google Maps API keys

MAP Service and API Keys

Changes as of June 11, 2018 will effect the WordPress Store Locator Plus (DIY) community.  Google requires all sites  using map services to have an API key with a billing account attached. See Google Developers console.

The Browser key is used to display the map and handle user-input addresses during a location search.  The Geocoding API  is used on your WordPress server to geocode locations you’ve entered via the Google “Places” box and  APIs.  You do not need the additional geocoding “key”   unless you have added  restrictions.  You do however, need to have the geocoding API enabled in your Google projects library.

Blocking Locator Requests By Query Volume

Premier Members with an active subscription can restrict the number of locator queries that can be made by a single IP address.   This feature can help prevent “location list theft” where a competitor uses the locator to scrape location information from a website or JavaScript query.

Note: In order to enable these settings you must enter your Premier Subscription user ID and Subscription ID under the General / Admin tab.  When entered correctly the notice under “Add On Packs , Subscription Accounts” will tell you your subscription is validated.   This feature is only functional while your subscription is active.

When your subscription has been validated you will see new options available to you under several Store Locator Plus tabs.    The new Security settings will appear under the General /App  subtab as shown below.

General?App/Security

Block Requests Limit

This is the maximum number of location searches a user can perform within the Block Requests Time Span before their IP address is blocked from all locator requests.

This should be set to an integer value greater than 0.

The first page load request from an IP address is always allowed, even if this setting is 0.

If this is set to “2” and the Block Request Time Span is set to “Hour” the system will allow 2 location searches before the IP address is blocked.

The initial loading of the locator page will count as a “search” if you have the default “show locations at startup” enabled.

Changing this parameter will not release already-blocked IP addresses.

Block Requests Time Span

This setting determines over which period of time the locator request limit is checked.   A user that has more than the Block Requests Limit number of locator searches performed in this time period will cause their IP address to be blocked from future location searches until their IP is “released” from the block list.

Setting this value to Never will disable the IP blocking system.

Changing this parameter will not release already-blocked IP addresses.

Release IP After

This is the maximum amount of time a request is “remembered” for a given IP address.   Once this amount of time has passed since the most recent location request that triggered the block the IP address is “released” and once again free to perform location searches.

IP Whitelist

A list of IP addresses that will not be tracked by the blocker.   This allows unlimited location lookups from these IP addresses.

Each address entry should be on a separate line.

Uses standard Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) format.   Typical entries include:

  • Whitelist a specific IP address: 192.168.1.1
  • Whitelist an entire C-class block: 192.168.1.0/24

Related Notes

Keep in mind that an IP address is not a unique “user” or “computer”.  Many locations share an IP address such as a hotel or your local Starbucks.    The limitations will apply to the entire group of users from the same shared IP address.

Once an IP address has been blocked, subsequent location requests are not tracked until the block has been released.  This design lessens the server load in both volume of data stored and data I/O requests.   It helps alleviate issues from possible denial-of-service type attacks where a bot loading requests in rapid succession could overwhelm the data storage and/or database I/O processing.

Blocking Locator Requests was added in the Premier Plugin version 4.7.11.

Forceload Javascript Warning

Store Locator Plus has a checkbox under the General /User Interface tab called Force Load Javascript

Having this checked forces the JavaScript for Store Locator Plus to load in the header of EVERY page on your site. This can slow down your site and will disable various Store Locator Plus features. If you need to do this to make SLP work you should ask your theme author to add proper wp_footer() support to their code, or switch to a theme that behaves properly.